Muppets Most Wanted was, at one time, entitled Muppets...Again, which would have been both entirely appropriate and a bad marketing hook. It suggests - accurately - that all you have do at this point is give people the Muppets again, and they will come. Of course I will, and of course I was entertained...mostly (hell, I'd even go see Tyler Perry's Madea Meets the Muppets, if only to keep myself guessing which of the gang ends up coming to Jesus - Beaker, obviously). But when I think back to those first three Muppet movies, I find myself asking: didn't they have coherent plots and such? Weren't they more than just a bunch of funny bits thrown together?

This is a rhetorical question, because I rewatched the first Muppet Movie again recently, and it holds up better than I suspect Muppets Most Wanted will in years to come. This is not to say the new movie is bad - no movie involving the genuine Muppets has ever flat-out sucked. But it is to say that when you have some of the funniest people in entertainment in the cast, and a roster of cameos that probably beats even It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the fact that your final product is just pretty good feels like a bit of a bummer.

There are enough funny bits, clever payoffs, aforementioned cameos and moments for most of your favorite classic characters that you won't likely have a bad time at Muppets Most Wanted (an Ingmar Bergman/Swedish Chef bit and a fairly blatant reference to Gonzo fucking chickens are highlights) - but you may wish that they'll come up with a better story next time. The premise - Muppets go to Europe and one of them is framed for a crime - is lifted almost wholesale from The Great Muppet Caper, while one of the major human characters, a bumbling French detective played by Ty Burrell, is pretty much a direct copy of Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau. Albeit a better one than the official copy played by Steve Martin in that particular franchise's reboot.

Things kick off with a musical number you've probably seen bits of online, in which Kermit and company flat-out admit sequels aren't usually as good, and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew nerdily points out that this is actually their seventh sequel (if you ignore the fact that there's little continuity after the first three). But here's a question - if this is a direct sequel to The Muppets, how do you just ignore Jason Segel's character from the first film? He and Walter were brothers and best friends - now that Walter is with the Muppets, you'd expect some acknowledgement that he misses his bro. The script never addresses this, except to imply that the first movie was in fact just a movie put on by the real Muppets. But in that case, where did Walter come from?

That may seem like a really stupid nitpick, but it's just one example of how this movie flagrantly does not care about story logic (another major one involves an impenetrable, inescapable Siberian gulag that is easily penetrated and escaped from as soon as it become convenient). And it's a problem that could be so easily resolved. How hard would it be to have one character point out a script hole, then have another make a joke about the screenwriter, then cut to a monkey Muppet typing out the script while flinging bananas at the screen? The problem would be completely solved within the movie's logic. That writer-director James Bobin and collaborator Nicholas Stoller can't be bothered to even offer that level of explanation is symptomatic of either a lack of oversight or simple laziness; I doubt the latter, but I'd love to see the next Muppets script get run past the gang at Pixar for a few suggestions.

Utilizing a classic trope that was, believe it or not, done better in Ernest Goes to Jail (which is only an insult if you choose to make it one), Muppets Most Wanted introduces Constantine, an evil Kermit doppelganger from Russia, identifiable primarily by a mole on his upper lip. In league with dodgy business manager Dominic Badguy (Ricky Gervais), he enacts a scheme to trade places with Kermit, sending our favorite frog to the gulag while using a Muppet Show tour of Europe as a pretext to rob museums. In the meantime, he lets every Muppet do exactly what they want, which initially makes them all think the boss suddenly got really cool...and Russian-sounding. Eventually, of course, the inevitable message that the rowdy kids need a disciplining parent figure must out, and Miss Piggy must decide whether a frog who actually will marry her without hesitation is preferable to the ever-evasive one she truly adores.

My main question is this. Do the majority of the songs actually go to the Muppets themselves this time? The fact that all of the big musical numbers went to the human cast really was my #1 complaint about the previous

There is zero continuity in the first three Muppet movies. In the second, Kermit and Fozzy are reporters (and brothers). In the third movie, they're all going to college together. After the first origin story movie, it was just "this is a movie they're making."

Cannot wait to go see this. In true Muppet fashion, three random bits to throw out. 1) Thanks for the Ernest reference. RIP Jim Varney! 2) Many people I know are currently only Muppet fans bc of the Segel/Adams movie, and I have warned then all along not to wager too much on the human actors. The original three do so well w/o significant human leads. 3)Re: The implication that the last movie was a movie put on by the real Muppets. Isn't that the running gag in all the movies? The real Muppets put on The Muppet Show. I always thought the "real" bits were backstage. Or In Space, which, I admit, I like more than I should.

Too bad, Kermit-less Muppet movie sounds a little bogus. Evil Ernest was in the TV show too... at one point it implied Ernest's ever-present hat was to cover up Evil Ernest's birthmark and they were the same guy all along...

I had the opportunity to see it last week (Disney Parks Blog hosted a showing), and I could not agree with you more. Something that bothered me was how there were bits that seemed to set something up, but were immediately tossed aside. The contents of Tina Fey's locker being one of them, the "backstory" of the heists being another. I'm wondering if they rushed it out, because the rising action is pretty great; or if perhaps they edited parts out.

I will say that anyone who wants to go see it really should, because it's great, great fun. I really appreciated the restraint they showed at the end of the film re: Kermit and Miss Piggy. And I don't think I've ever laughed so much at Gervais.

I don't know if it's sad or perfectly reasonable to be looking forward to this more so than some of the other of this year's hyped franchises. Either way, glad to hear it's a fun time even if not a classic.

That wasn't computer-generated. Every full-body puppet sequence (like the I'm Number One musical number) was done entirely with actual puppets on a greenscreen (or bluescreen in this case). They've been using this technique since the 70s. Remember Kermit and Fozzie dancing in the bar in The Muppet Movie? That was literally the exact same thing. I'll agree that it looks kinda jarring, but it's not CGI.